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Despite hot weather, Californians reduced water use 27.3 percent in June, exceeding the governor’s 25 percent mandate imposed as a response to the worsening effects of a four-year drought, state officials announced Thursday.

SAN BERNARDINO >> How deep would you have had to dig to reach water in your neighborhood in 1963? Where were the streams the city of San Bernardino paved over decades ago? What do we know about the local water quality when your parents were children? The

FRESNO >> California water regulators flexed their muscles by ordering a group of farmers to stop pumping from a branch of the San Joaquin River amid an escalating battle over how much power the state has to protect waterways that are drying up in the drought.

SACRAMENTO >> California extended its drought-inspired purge of idyllic emerald lawns from new developments, with state officials voting Wednesday to adopt more stringent water limits on landscapes for new homes and businesses.

It’s official: If you’ve got a brown lawn, cities can’t force you to water it or fine you for it. Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown’s bill on Monday prohibiting municipalities from fining residents for not watering their lawns or having a brown lawn amidst the worst drought in the state’s history.

UPLAND >> One of the thirstiest cities in the region faces a future of getting its population to rethink how its water is used. Upland, because of its daily water consumption, has to cut its use by 36 percent, because it fell in the highest reduction tier mandated in the Gov.

LOS ANGELES — Meteorologists say odds are good for a wet California winter as a strong El Nino builds in the Pacific Ocean. The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that scientists say a significant El Niño is more than 90 percent likely.

Los Angeles County beachgoers will still be able to rinse off the sand and salt after a day at the ocean even though state officials have ordered outdoor showers and rinse stations be shut off at all state parks and beaches.

Due to an overwhelming response, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California shut down its turf removal rebate program Thursday because it ran out of money, the district announced. The water agency burned through the last $150 million in the past seven weeks, after the board added $350 million to the fund on May 26, said Sherita Coffelt, MWD spokeswoman.

A water district has sued Tom Selleck, claiming the veteran actor and star of the crime shows “Magnum, P.I.” and “Blue Bloods” stole truckloads of water from a public hydrant and took it to his ranch in drought-stricken Westlake Village.

Water conservation levels among California residential users reached an all-time high for May, sending a wave of optimism through state regulators who hope the savings could continue into the drier summer months.

SACRAMENTO >> California’s drought-stricken cities set a record for water conservation, reducing usage 29 percent in May, according to data released by a state agency Wednesday. Regulators hope the savings will last through summer as California communities are under order to cut water use by 25 percent compared to 2013 levels.

Emphasizing practical solutions in the battle over drought relief, a congressman urged local water leaders Monday to fight for funding for projects such as waste-water recycling and infrastructure repairs.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. >> Federal officials said Wednesday another $150 million would be provided to aid California drought aid programs. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the funding continues efforts to relieve the nation’s top agriculture producing state during its fourth dry year.

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a water conservation ordinance restricting outdoor watering to two days a week for High Desert and mountain residents and businesses provided water by the county.

The water restrictions are here to stay, and residents and leaders alike are asking questions. That’s why Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez (D-Pomona) is hosting a Drought Resources Workshop to help residents see their way through new mandated cuts ordered by state and local water agencies.

Faced with oppressive summer heat compounding four consecutive years of drought, Southern Californians are inventing new ways for coping with water shortages, including spray-painting haystack-colored lawns green, padlocking water spigots and, if that fails, appealing to a higher power.

They are insects the size of rice grains, with minuscule mandibles that bring down forests. Now and for the next several weeks, these tiny tubular timber terrorists are expanding their footholds in the forests of California as they fly out of dead or dying trees to find this season’s hosts.

SACRAMENTO >> In a historic step, California is cutting water allotments to some of the state’s most senior rights holders, who have depended upon essentially unlimited water from the state’s rivers and streams for more than a century.

SACRAMENTO — Drought-stricken California has ordered the largest cuts on record to farmers holding some of the state’s strongest water rights. State water officials announced the decision Friday to tell more than a hundred senior rights holders in California’s Sacramento, San Joaquin and delta watersheds to stop pumping from those waterways.

LOS ANGELES — Gov. Jerry Brown says “a more elegant” way of living, along with technology and the will to adapt, will preserve the California dream for generations to come despite the current crisis resulting from the drought.

SAN FRANCISCO >> Too sexy for the drought? No such thing, according to San Francisco Bay Area water officials who are rolling out a new line of racy public awareness ads coaxing an already water-thrifty metropolis to give it up just a bit more.

FIREBAUGH >> More than $340 million that was supposed to be rushed to drought-stricken California communities sits unspent in government bank accounts more than a year after lawmakers voted to use the money to provide water, protect wells from contamination and upgrade outdated water systems.

BERKELEY >> Showering during California’s drought is a guilt-free experience for homeowners Catarina Negrin and Noah Friedman. The Berkeley couple — she runs a preschool, he’s an architect — are early adopters of a home plumbing do-over that’s becoming more popular during California’s record four-year dry stretch.

SACRAMENTO >> Dozens of California farmers aiming to meet voluntary water conservation targets submitted plans to the state saying they intend to plant less thirsty crops and leave some fields unplanted amid the relentless drought.

New figures showing Californians saved more water in April than during any other month in the year buoyed state water officials Tuesday, who expressed optimism the uptick in water conservation will continue into the warm, summer months.

LOS ANGELES >> From drought-shaming to eco-boasting, willing or not, celebrities are playing a role in raising awareness about California’s debilitating drought. Stars whose homes boast lush, green lawns at a time when residents have been asked to cut back on water may be drought-shamed on social media.

When Gov. Jerry Brown asked Californians to voluntarily conserve water by 20 percent, the response was an underwhelming savings of 9 percent. But since the summer of 2014 when the governor issued his call, the drought worsened.

STOCKTON >> A 143-year-old piece of paper proves that Rudy Mussi has a legal right to water from the gently meandering Middle River that nourishes his family farm. But the same piece of paper — a “certificate of purchase,” signed in florid 19th-century handwriting and faded to near illegibility — also is proof to a growing number of critics that California has outgrown its water rights system.

LOS ANGELES — The board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District will consider a proposal today to add $350 million to its budget to provide rebates and incentives for Southland residents to remove water-guzzling turf and install low-water-use fixtures.

SACRAMENTO >> California farmers who hold rights to water that date back as far as the Gold Rush are bracing for their first state-ordered conservation in decades, as a record drought prompts some of the deepest cuts yet in the country’s most productive agricultural state.

FRESNO >> Farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta who have California’s oldest water rights are proposing to voluntarily cut their use by 25 percent to avoid the possibility of even harsher restrictions by the state later this summer as the record drought continues.

LOS ANGELES — Protesters rallied outside a Nestle water-bottling plant in Los Angeles today, demanding that the company halt its operations in response to the state’s drought. A simultaneous rally was held at a plant in Sacramento.

An overwhelming majority of Californians believe the state’s drought is extremely serious and support Gov. Jerry Brown’s mandatory new water conservation rules, according to a new statewide poll released Tuesday.

California State University has turned into a learning lab for water conservation. During today’s meeting at the Chancellor’s Office in Long Beach, trustees for the 23-campus system learned about efforts to cut water use amid a record drought and

ONTARIO >> New state water restrictions by the State Water Resources Control Board to help speed along a historic conservation effort in light of the drought were shared with members of the local real estate community at a forum here.

For more than a century, the springs in the mountains above San Bernardino have provided the cold, crystal-clear water once legendary for its healing qualities, and which flowed into what has become part of a multibillion-dollar bottled-water industry.